Count Ronsard drew a long, long whiff from his cigarette, and then ostentatiously flipped the ash in air. It dissolved before reaching the floor, a vague little puff of gray nothingness. "That is what the Japanese think of such a promise!The true Jehovah in Japan is the composite will of the family. Is it not partly so in France, Monsieur? If you really desired marriage with this bit of ivory, and—pardon me—so harsh a yoke seems utterly unnecessary, you should have persuaded your inamorata to become a Christian, and, while still in America, have consummated a Christian marriage. Even a Japanese, in these enlightened days, would not dare to attack such a bond."
"She is a Christian already," said Pierre. "And for an American marriage I pleaded with a scourged soul. Even Madame Todd advised it; but Yuki-ko would not listen. She must wait, she said, for her family's consent."
"Very proper of Mademoiselle," said Ronsard, gravely. As Pierre made no immediate reply, the count went on with his theme, "The Japanese family, my son, is like a large web, or a small solar system. In the midst, as a central sun, or reptile, squats the father. Behind him is the mystery and power ofhisfather, living or dead, and his father's father, back to the visionary era of Jimmu Tenno. All about him, as planets, or flies, are dotted the children, the wife, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins to the tenth branch, the family servants and their connections, the family cat, the family dog, the family ghost, the priests, soothsayers, physicians,—Mon Dieu, down to the very crickets who chirp beneath the family doorstone. In a question of marriage, all these must be consulted. The bride is no more than a gnat caught somewhere in the web, or a very small satellite belonging to a distant world."
"It is of interest, your Excellency," protested Pierre; "but I have no mind to give it. Consider my plight. I am young, madly in love, and touched with despair. I turn to you as a father."
"A father?" echoed the count, with a small gleam of amusement in his eyes, "Mother of God! It is a name to conjure with. What will you?"
"You have lived here long; you know the country well. Aid me to win the only woman I can ever love."
"In lawful marriage? Shall I assist you to inclose yourself in that barbed-wire fence of love?"
"There can be no other thought for Miss Onda and me," said Pierre, stiffly.
Count Ronsard shrugged. "You are quixotic. I was so at your age. Such sentiments are, I assure you, wasted in this place. The Japanese themselves prefer the laxer course. They very properly execrate these mixed marriages, especially legal mixed marriages."
The man's voice was so soft, so kindly, so self-controlled, that Pierre, in a sort of wonder, turned again to study his face. The minister met his look with the friendliest of smiles and a little nod. Then, as if to give the student of physiognomy every chance, he modestly lowered his eyes.
It was a face that must have been old even in childhood,—old, and shrewd, and self-indulgent. The unhealthy fat, which gave his body an unstable rotundity, showed here chiefly in the cheeks, sagging them down into loosely filled bags, and drawing long wrinkles in the pull. The forehead, very narrow toward the top, with hair growing downward in a deep point, was as gray as the scant, bristling hair. The whole face, indeed, was gray; its hueless monotony given emphasis by the single note of the underlip which protruded, moist, velvety, and round, like a scarlet fungus from the bark of a rotting tree.
"To be candid, my boy," murmured the minister, still with eyelids drooped, "your penchant for Miss Onda was already known to me. A ship is a huge floating laboratory of social gossip. Touch land, voilà, and the germs fly. My attaché, Monsieur Mouquin, chanced to witness your meeting with Papa Onda. He saw your rejection, and the manner in which your betrothed was heartlessly abducted. We—that is, Mouquin and myself—have even ventured to speculate upon possibilities, diplomatic possibilities in the interest of France, that may be lying dormant in your continued—er—friendship with the charming Miss Onda. At the axis of each new twig of history, Monsieur, sits the love of a woman."
"I—I trust that I do not clearly understand your Excellency," said Pierre, fighting down, as he spoke, a whole swarm of unsavory intuitions.
The count gave a small, resigned sigh, turned slightly in hischair, and tapped with one white hand his heap of opened letters. "Several of these documents suggest the appointment of a certain young Monsieur Le Beau to office in the French Legation at Tokio. The old Duc de St. Cyr is writer of one."
"Monsieur le Duc is my great-uncle, and my friend," said Pierre.
"You will realize that it becomes my duty to acquaint myself with the calibre of such an applicant, of a youth so highly recommended, and especially at a time when relations between our country and Japan are slightly—er—neuralgic."
"I have no previous record in civil service, but I believe I could do something for France."
"Ah, that is just the point!" said the count, with more eagerness than he had yet showed. "To serve France,—that is our whole concern. You have had no training, it is true; yet you have already a weapon that old and tried diplomats might weep for. I refer, as you conjecture, to your friendship with Mademoiselle Onda, daughter of Tetsujo Onda, and ward, in a sense, of his Highness Prince Haganè."
Pierre, in a flash, was upon his feet. Cigarette ashes tumbled from the folds of his waistcoat. He hurled a newly lighted tube into the fire. "You, sir," he began, with evident effort to control his voice, "you, sir, are experienced, and I am ignorant; you are calm and I am impetuous,—perhaps I should listen courteously to what you wish to say; but I believe it impossible for me to do so. I love this girl as a man loves the woman whom he desires to make his honored wife. In England, where I went to school, I learned ideas, stricter perhaps than Parisian conceptions, of the sacredness and the responsibility of marriage. This girl is a thing of snow. No tie could be too strong, no sacrament too safe, for pledging my fidelity. You see, I could not listen."
The count, as the young man was speaking, gazed steadily into the fire. His face remained as expressionless as a leaf. Pierre, striding here and there in his agitation, came back at length to the mantel, and stood still. The count spoke slowly.
"It is far better for France and for you that I speak my mind fully; yet, because you are ignorant and impetuous, you cannot, as you say, listen in decent reserve. It is ever so with youth."
The deep sadness of the elder man swept aside Pierre's rising indignation. He looked very old now, huddled in the great chair, his hands spread, palm outward, to the blaze.
Pierre threw himself on an ottoman near. "Pardon my boorishness. I will listen, Monsieur, though your words be fangs. You are my mother's valued friend, and for that alone I should owe you reverence. Speak what you will."
At the re-mention of the word "mother," the same curious look flickered in Ronsard's eyes. He drew a sigh, gathered himself into a more upright posture, and asked of Pierre, in judicial tones, "Let me inquire, Monsieur, whether you and Mademoiselle Onda, or your friends the Todds, have thought out any logical conclusion, should the family of Onda determine that you are to be definitely repulsed?"
Pierre dropped his head to his hands. "No, we can think of nothing,—except elopement, and that, now, is impossible."
"Have you thought for her of a possible forced marriage?"
"To a Japanese? Yes, my God, when have I not thought it! No, Monsieur, I do not think it—I will not; she would accept death sooner than break her troth to me. I have her word, her broken hairpin—"
"A menacing implement—" interpolated Ronsard.
"Can you think it possible, your Excellency?"
"What, the forced marriage?" Ronsard broke off, looked at Pierre, and then, as if in compassion, removed his gaze.
"Make it not unendurable," muttered Pierre, through whitening lips.
"I make nothing," said Ronsard. "You have begun the train of disaster; I can but trace the map of possible retreat. Yes, I believe truly that the next move in her family will be to marry her off to some eligible suitor,—an old man, probably, one strong enough to keep you and the girl in check. Some worn-out voluptuary, or a War-God in Pig Iron, like old Haganè himself."
Pierre raised bloodshot eyes. His mouth writhed andopened, but no words came. The old diplomat's voice had been like cut velvet, woven on wires of steel.
"You—you—do not—spare—" Pierre managed to gasp at length.
Ronsard wore, if anything, a look of satisfaction. He now lifted a jewelled hand to press and pinch and fondle the moist, warm cushion of the protruding lip. His eyes, from under their drooping lids, darted sharp fusillades of meaning upon his shrinking companion. The very sting restored Pierre. "Yes," resumed the other, as if Pierre had spoken, "in such mariages de convenance personal affection is left aside. Yet how deplorable—how impossible—that a Botticelli in ivory and pearl should never know the joys of ardent love! Opportunities always arise. And then, as wife of a Japanese official, Mademoiselle Onda might prove invaluable to France—invaluable!"
Pierre rose this time slowly. Both delicate hands gripped the rim of the table hard. For a moment he shut his eyes that the vision of the sneering, sensual face might not tempt the blow his young arm tingled to inflict. "It is enough," he said, "I was wrong in thinking that I could listen. If your Excellency will now be so good as to excuse me—"
Ronsard gave a gesture of good fellowship. He smiled cunningly to himself as Pierre vanished from the room. Self-congratulations fawned upon him. His aim had been true. The poisoned arrow was in place, and though Pierre might snap, or draw it forth, the wound would fester.
Among his morning letters one had been carefully concealed. It was of the latest tint and shape of fashion. It smelled of Paris and intrigue. The last words were these, "Say nothing to my headstrong boy of this letter, but, for my sake, keep him from serious entanglement. I object not, you will understand, to passing follies; but let not the handcuffs of a Japanese marriage click. Mon Dieu, think of grandchildren! Yours, for the old time's sake, Olga Le Beau." The count read it through once more, rubbed it thoughtfully against his red lip, and finally, with a sentimental sigh, placed it on the coals.
Dropping his head forward, he began to dream. At first it was of Paris, only Paris, with its gay streets, beautiful women,its theatres and supper-rooms. What waste of years to have lived so long away! Yet in the East had been compensations. Diplomacy, as he conceived it, was the highest form of gambling; life itself, a spinning roulette table. Diplomacy was the only profession for one with romance, poetry, passion in his veins, and brains in his skull. Pierre, Olga Brekendorff's child, was fitted for the career, if, at the outset, he did not manacle his own hands. He must not marry, least of all marry a Japanese girl of high connections. Let the girl love him, and be given to another. Visions of purloined state papers, of secrets won in the marriage chamber only to be given France next morning, of Japanese chagrin at the mysterious betrayal of plans, caressed him with leprous fingers. Ah, to be young once more and beautiful, like Pierre! How like his eyes were to the Russian mother! No wonder the Japanese girl loved him!
A sharp knock roused him.
"Entrez! Oidè!"
Mouquin rushed in as if pursued, leaving the door open. Within a few feet of Ronsard he stood still, shivering in an ague of excitement.
"Well, what is it? Speak, man. You chatter and grimace like an ape."
Mouquin waved a small square of paper printed in Japanese. "An extra! War! They say Togo has fired!"
Ronsard leaned forward and snatched the paper. He read Japanese well.
"War! Togo fired this morning! Three Russian boats already sunk! Mother of God!"
The telephone began a frantic ringing. Mouquin went to it sidewise. "Your Excellency, the Russian minister."
"Hold the wire." Ronsard got to his feet. Mouquin still chattered. His words came now in a torrent. He was drunk with the bigness of the hour. "Fired, your Excellency! Japan the pygmy, with no further provocation, has dared fire upon Imperial Russia!"
Ronsard eyed the speaker with a sort of scorn. "True, Monsieur, and, as I understand, Japan the pygmy has begun already to sink Imperial Russia."
Mouquin stared for a moment at the speaker, seeking a clue to the unexpected words. Perhaps he saw for himself a chance at singularity. He bowed over, gave a low laugh, and backing toward the door cried out, "And has begun to—sinkImperial Russia! Banzai Nippon!" He went out quickly.
Ronsard stood quiet by the telephone. It hissed and bubbled like an impaled crab. He lifted the receiver slowly, his eyes still on the door. "I know it now," he murmured, "I have long suspected it. Somewhere in this desert of gray huts Mouquin has a Japanese wife. It was her lips that uttered through him that 'Banzai Nippon.' And so I think it would soon be with the impressionable Pierre. Hello! Oui, it is Ronsard."
Intothe wide, white streets of modern Yedo, Pierre stumbled alone. There had been no definite thought in his hurried flight, only a craving to flee from the polluting face and soft, compelling voice of his compatriot. How was it possible for a man with the intelligence of Ronsard to harbor such ideas of Japanese character? Yuki's very presence breathed purity; yet that old man had said—had dared to hint— Pierre broke away from the recollection, hid his eyes, and groaned. As a consequence he was nearly hurled to earth by a passing kuruma-man, whose warning cry of "Hek! Hek!" had been ignored.
Pierre recovered himself with difficulty. The occupant of the vehicle, a stout burgher of the middle class with sulphur-colored socks and a gaudy watch-chain, essayed some laughing excuse; but the wiry human steed, deliberately putting his shafts to the ground, squared himself before the offending "Seiyo-jin" to deliver a volley of heterogeneous oaths, selected at random from the stores of other nations. Pierre, unmoved by these comic insults, apologized to the burgher in three languages, and hurried on.
Now for the first time he noticed that flags were being hung at every door. Flags fluttered from the backs of jinrikishas and were stuck on top of pull-cart loads. Past him hurried newsboys with printed hand-bills held eagerly upward. Small bells jangled at their hips.
"Nan desu ka?" (What is it?) he asked politely of a passer-by.
"Ikusa," was the brief response, accompanied, as Pierre could not help seeing, by a disdainful, yet triumphant scowl. "Ikusa" was a word not included in the Frenchman's short vocabulary.
Four University students, with the exaggeratedly short skirts, and the brawny, bare legs of the Satsuma faction, came lurching toward him. All grinned at sight of the alien, and shouted with one voice, "Banzai Nippon!"
Pierre understood this phrase at least. "An excellent sentiment," he remarked gravely in English; "but now will you kindly inform me why it seems appropriate to the present moment?"
The boys nudged one another and giggled. One of them at length answered in careful English, "Mr. Togo has war already begun. Many Russian battle-ships, having been this day fired upon, have into sea-bottom sinked. All will be sinked! Banzai Nippon!"
"Banzai Nippon!" roared his comrades; and the four, with sundry delighted, backward glances at the bewildered foreigner, hurried on.
Pierre, ignoring consequences, again stood still. Jinrikishas clattered past him to the right, to the left, singly, or now in long, black strings. The faces of human horses and vehicle occupants were alike vivified by a singular excitement. Many of the little trotting men conversed volubly with those whom they bore. "Ikusa! Ikusa!" was the burden of all speech.
"Ikusa," repeated Pierre, dully. "This 'Ikusa' undoubtedly means 'war.'" He knew in his soul that the rumor was true. Visions of the scowling Onda, of Prince Haganè, of the leering, intelligent eyes of Count Ronsard, flew past him with the real faces of the streets. He cursed aloud. "War!" a new wedge between himself and Yuki.
He walked on now with nervous energy. "Yu-ki—Yu-ki—Yu-ki,"—his heart and steps kept pace with the refrain. The whole world fell into the despairing swing of it. "Yu-ki—Yu-ki—Yu-ki!"
A little Japanese matron, hastening to a sick neighbor's house with the great news, gave him a commiserating glance. Her husband was a sailor on one of the battle-ships now fighting. She was proud and happy. What sorrow could it be that made the young foreigner's eyes so deep and blue? Surely this was not war! It must be love. She had heard that in the affairs of love the foreigners found strange griefs.
"Dō-mo!" murmured the little dame to herself, "I am grateful to the gods this day to be a Japanese with my husband in a glorious fight."
Pierre walked now, still unheeding, in a direction almost due west from the French Legation. On his right hand stretched the long moats edged stiffly with young willows. He had been told that these trees were planted by an adoring people on the day, just fifteen years before, that the Emperor, out of his wise and loving heart, had given to them a parliamentary government. Only fifteen years! The willows had none of them attained full growth, and yet the nation that had planted them had that morning fired upon one of the proudest and most implacable empires of old Europe.
On the enormous campus directly in front of the Imperial gates, citizens by thousands were assembling. They surged here and there in a breathless, whispered excitement. Their lowered voices and moving garments made a sound as of the sea.
All eyes were turned upward to the Imperial moat walls, where white dots of faces belonging to the court ladies peered over for an instant and vanished.
The Emperor was not visible. The crowd did not expect to see him, and had he suddenly manifested himself would have felt chagrin rather than exultation. They knew that his heart was with them, and they reverenced him thus silently with the feeling one has in a vast cathedral, just before the service begins.
The Frenchman hurried by with down-bent head, knowing himself an intruder. At the Sakurada gate of the moat system he again took his bearings, and saw that by continuing in a straight course he would reach the American Legation. He realized on the instant that this was the place where he wished to go. In all this beautiful, mysterious land he had but two friends, Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen.
On a steep slope facing to the northeast, and leading up by several roads to the broad and thickly populated district of Azabu, Tokio, can be seen a Japanese gate which is large without being imposing, and severe without being dignified. Perhaps the peculiar contours of the land in this unfavoredspot, the infelicitous swerve of the road, and an awkward grading of the hill, make the tall gateway always appear just a little uneasy. This is the main entrance of the American Legation. Behind it stands a large structure of wood with office-buildings attached. The contrast of buildings and gate is not cheerful. Nor is the large surrounding garden of less amorphous aspect. A wide stretch of well-kept lawn with no particular outline, disheartening attempts along the edges at bits of Japanese hill and rock formation, together with certain unrelated patches of shrub and tree, coexist in a sort of Eurasian tolerance.
Pretty Gwendolen openly called her present domicile a barn. Mrs. Todd had begun at once buying blindly and indiscriminately from peddlers, hawkers, and "curio-men," who infest the official homes of new-comers. As a result, the high walls of the Legation rooms were being rapidly covered with atrocious kakèmono, some too high, some too low, and all, from the standpoint of art, utterly vicious. On tables, shelves, and mantelpieces stood gaudy Japanese vases such as a native rag-picker could hardly have been persuaded to use (though the price given by Mrs. Todd for a single article might have educated his son), and various household utensils, each, to the eye of a Japanese visitor, uttering a shriek of incongruity.
Should a Japanese lady fill one of her low-ceiled, spacious rooms with foreign lithographs representing lambs, blue-eyed children, baskets of fruit, nude women, jockeys, and landscapes, each in a flaring gold frame, hanging them anywhere from two feet above the matting to the ceiling line itself,—should she, between these rectangular blasphemies, suspend bits of foreign underwear, old neckties, garters, belts, hair-brushes, and egg-beaters, and, to complete the artistic impression, set about on the floor decorated soup-tureens, water-coolers with growing plants, and lard-baskets piled high with Japanese cakes,—an American visitor, entering for the first time, would get much the same impression that Japanese visitors derived from Mrs. Todd's drawing-rooms.
On this clear morning of February 9, 1904, the American Legation, in company with all others of the great Easterncapital, hummed and vibrated to the excitement of war. Telephone wires were kept hot. Messengers went back and forth ceaselessly with "chits" (notes) written in English, French, Spanish, German, and other tongues. Carriage-wheels rolled and rattled in every street. Pierre was ushered into the main drawing-room, a place which always made him shudder and think of William Morris. Mrs. Todd, Gwendolen, and Mr. Dodge were already there. The two latter were standing; Dodge evidently was on the point of departure. Mrs. Todd sat close to the soft-coal fire, sewing some green American fringe on a kesa—a Buddhist priest's robe—which she was to use for a piano cover.
Gwendolen, first catching sight of the visitor, went forward in her bright, impetuous way. "Thank goodness that you came! Isn't this war-news exciting? Wasn't that banquet last night, after the Red God appeared, a regular skeleton's feast? Have you heard from Yuki this morning?"
Before Pierre could segregate the necessary replies, Minister Todd was in the room. He walked slowly, studying, with his thin quaint smile, a large visiting card, apparently just received. He nodded all around, and then addressed himself directly to Dodge.
"Prince Haganè has called. Would you advise me to see him alone?"
"No, no, Cy. I won't hear to it!" protested Mrs. Todd. "With this war started, he may be intending you bodily harm!"
"Nonsense, my dear," said her spouse, patting one plump shoulder.
Dodge had been scrutinizing the legend on the pasteboard.
"This is his Highness's most rigidly official card. Yes, sir, you will have to see him alone. But don't commit yourself by the faintest hint. We have as yet received no instructions from Washington."
"Why, what was that great bunch of cables that came this morning?" asked the lady, with childlike eyes.
Todd grinned toward his secretary, who now cast a grinless and apprehensive look in the direction of Pierre. Dodge answered for the office, "Those related to an entirely differentmatter, Mrs. Todd, a personal matter. Your husband, Minister Todd, has had no instructions with regard to this war just begun."
Pierre, reddening slightly, beckoned Gwendolen across the room. They stood staring out across the wide brown lawn. Mr. Todd and his assistant left the room together. Above the Buddhist garment she was desecrating, Mrs. Todd murmured plaintively, "I've known it all along,—though Count Breakitoff in Washington assured me it could not come. I was certain that just as soon as I got over here the horrid thing would break out. Just suppose the Russians capture Tokio! They boast already that they will dictate terms of peace in Tokio before next Christmas day, and the Russian troops are like wild beasts." Here she gave a shudder, and raised her voice. "Oh, Gwendolen, why did we leave Washington, or even our peaceful Western home? I'd give ten thousand dollars to be set down right now in a good Christian wheat-field. This is awful, simplyawful!"
"And I think it glorious, simply glorious!" sang Gwendolen from the window. "Already the prospect tingles in my veins. It is better than a coming-out party, better than auto-mobiling on a road of green glass! I feel that delicious, tragic, matinée feeling I used to have as a child, just as the curtain starts to rise."
"And you are not afraid something is going to happen?" asked Mrs. Todd.
"I'm only afraid that something isn't going to happen," returned the intrepid one.
Pierre sauntered toward the hearth. "I come of a fighting race, yet now I share Madame's views rather than those of her spirited daughter. This war means a new gulf between Yuki and me."
Gwendolen's face sobered. "I've thought of that. You are right. It means a wider gulf; it ought to mean a wider gulf."
Pierre moved nearer the fire and spread his delicate hands to the flame. "Your tone, Mademoiselle," he began with a most pathetic attempt at lightness, "might imply that the gulf is already of sufficient width to admit despair."
Gwendolen threw back her head and looked at him from under long lashes. "I didn't say so," returned she.
"Speech is the least satisfactory form of intelligent communication," answered Pierre, still trying to smile himself and her into the delusion that he was but partly in earnest.
"Did you see the way that Yuki's father watched us all last night?" asked the girl, irrelevantly.
"No, I cannot say I bestowed much attention. Whenever possible, I keep my eyes from unpleasing objects."
"You do well, Pierre," asserted Mrs. Todd; "especially in this case. I was next him most of the time, and though I did not look, I have acquired neuralgia in the shoulder which was nearest him."
"He wasn't what one would call exactly—gushing," mused Gwendolen. She seated herself now, and fell into a sort of reverie, dropping her chin and catching it in one hand,—a gesture ludicrously like Mr. Todd. Pierre's glance into her face added, it would seem, to his uneasiness.
"I presume it is only war that has brought Prince Haganè to call so promptly," said he, tentatively, with a note of challenge in his voice.
Gwendolen gave a small sniff. "War! He may call it war,—but it is Yuki! Prince Haganè stands behind that old pickled samurai, Onda; I felt it last night. I tried to hint it to you then, but you were determined not to see." She rose to her feet again, and began to flutter near, in the fashion most disastrous to Mrs. Todd's always sensitive nerves.
"Do sit down, Gwendolen, or you will have my brains as tangled as this knot of silk," cried the matron. She began now to jerk at the shining strands, as if they were partly the cause of her irritation. In an instant they were reduced to the condition of a small demented rainbow. Pierre took a low stool, seated himself near the knee of his hostess, and began deftly to unravel the tangle.
He had not tried to answer Gwendolen's last remark; perhaps he could not. Something in his face smote the girl's generous heart. She knelt at the other side of Mrs. Todd's ample knee-space, crying, "Pierre, I have hurt you! I am ahorrid, brusque girl. I ought to be a telephone 'central.' I didn't mean to hurt."
"That's just your way, Gwendolen," admonished Mrs. Todd. "You will do things first, and repent them after. How often have I told you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
"Nay, Madame," entreated Pierre, "speak not so harshly. Miss Gwendolen is merely impulsive. I know her for a good friend of my Yuki, and, I hope, of myself. Such candor may smart a little, but it is beneficial. The truth is, I am sore, wounded, aching, from a talk just held with his Excellency Count Ronsard. I think I came here for balm."
"You told him of your—attachment?" questioned Mrs. Todd, eagerly. Gwendolen rose slowly, went over to a divan and seated herself.
"Yes," said Pierre, "I told him. And for reasons quite different, quite apart from any that Yuki's friends or relatives might urge, he is antagonistic to the idea of my marriage. Of course his opposition means nothing to me. I care not if the whole of France sailed East to prevent me. My faith is bound to Yuki, and I shall not give her up. But in the matter of official appointment Count Ronsard can make difficulties. Indeed I am convinced that he has been holding my credentials all along, and, for his own whim, will not give them."
Gwendolen had listened quietly to the full speech, though her eyes were shining with anger. "The old sinner!" she exclaimed; "the idea of his daring to object to Yuki! What were his reasons, I would like to know!"
Pierre flushed. "To put it delicately,—that Yuki is not of French descent."
Gwendolen bridled. "Oh, I see! You needn't say any more. Probably he would object to me for the same reason, thinking me an alloy of red Indian and buffalo. For sheer, crass ignorance, commend me to the European savant! Well, I would like to go to Mr. Ronsard and just inform him that there is no king nor emperor of Europe who need not be proud to win my Yuki-ko!"
"You may be sure I told him, with enough of vehemence to suit even you, Mademoiselle."
"The miserable old wretch!" murmured Mrs. Todd, above the kesa.
Gwendolen's gaze, now that the anger died, went moodily to Pierre. He met the look with a smile no less winning for its sadness.
"Pierre, you are a dear boy," she said, her own eyes suddenly stung by tears; "I know Yuki loves you, and I can't blame her. I wish—oh, I wish you could be happy together; but—"
"Can you not omit that last small word?"
The girl sighed deeply, then leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "Pierre," she was beginning in great seriousness; she had in her mind to ask whether, if once convinced of the impossibility of marriage with Yuki either now or ever, he would still demand from her fidelity, defiance of her parents, and of all the established rules of her class,—still hold her to that promise he had wrung.
Since that banquet of the Red God, only the evening before, and now fleeing with strange rapidity into the past,—since she had seen Pierre's very charm and artistic sensitiveness used as clever traps for his entanglement, he meantime suspecting nothing, Gwendolen felt not only that the marriage would be indefinitely postponed, but that it would be finally prevented. The subtlety, the ideality, the self-sacrificing impulses of a Japanese nature indissolubly bound to Pierre must mean sorrow, if not degeneration to both. As well try to graft a French geranium upon the stem of a young bamboo! Before she could put her question, Mr. Todd, re-entering, diverted all interest to himself.
Mrs. Todd was first to speak. "Oh, Cy, tell me quick! Has war really begun, or were those reports only to frighten us? Did he confess that war had come?"
"He didn't confess, exactly. He admitted war, as he might have admitted that the day was cold or the wind blowing. I never feel quite myself before that man! He charges me with electricity first, and then hypnotizes me afterward. As clearly as I can make out, it was a friendly visit, its particular object being to ascertain correctly the amount of indisposition acquired by each separate guest from last night's revelry."
"Revelry," murmured Gwendolen.
"I hope you did not tell him that I had nightmare, Cy!" said Mrs. Todd, anxiously.
"I did not."
"I hope you did tell him that I think Japanese food delicious, and would like to live on it," cried Gwendolen.
"I did," said her father. "He looked bored. Evidently charming young American women are nothing to Prince Haganè. His chief concern, it seemed, was Pierre."
"I—Monsieur?" echoed Pierre, with a nervous start.
"Yes, I can't recall now any very direct questions,—he didn't exactly 'pump,' yet in his esoteric way he let me know that all I could tell him of you he would be glad to learn."
Pierre tried to meet Gwendolen's eyes, but she had turned away.
"Did you speak of my Russian mother, Mr. Todd?"
"No; I had the chance, but dodged it. I thought it none of his Highness's business."
"Merci," murmured the other.
"Speaking of Dodging it," put in Gwendolen; "where is your secretary?"
"He got a 'chit' from the Spanish Legation, and asked for an hour's leave of absence."
"That fat Carmen Gil y Niestra," puffed Mrs. Todd. (Mrs. Todd's own weight was over the two hundred mark, yet she was scathing in her scorn of avoirdupois in another.) "These European women are shameless in the way they run after men. She's shadowing Dodge now. I wonder what she can want of him." The good lady applied herself with renewed diligence to her robe. Gwendolen studied the stucco-work of the ceiling. In the somewhat strained silence Pierre rose. Mr. Todd was close to him. He put a hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder, and looked down into his face. Pierre, in spite of efforts for self-control, shrank back, his lips quivering with a prescience of new pain.
Gwendolen ran to his defence. "We know what you are going to say. It has been spoken already. Spare us, dad. We are all upset this morning, and when one is upset good advice is an insult. I challenge you to a set at tennis,Pierre. Come, come, the court is perfect, though the skies be gray."
Pierre turned eagerly. "Capital, nothing could be better. But my costume,—I have not the necessary flannels, shoes—" He looked himself over in concern.
"You have your legs and arms, I presume," said Gwendolen, dryly.
Catching up the rackets and a box of balls, she hurried out, leaving the glass door open.
"Shut the door, Pierre," called Mrs. Todd.
Todd watched the slim young figure as he went. Faithful to Mrs. Todd's admonition, he closed the panel with the greatest care, rattling the knob to show that the latch had caught.
Mr. Todd sighed. "I wish that door opened into France, and that I held a St. Peter's key to it," he murmured, as if to himself.
Mrs. Todd wondered above the robe. "What's that pretty thing you're making?" asked her spouse, quickly. "A piano cover? Gwendolen ought to play a regular 'Streets of Cairo' potpourri under that. Aren't you afraid the old priest's ghost will haunt you?"
"You do talk such nonsense for a grown-up, intelligent man," reproved his dame, but her lips and her eyes smiled.
"Those are the times when I make my most sensible remarks," said he, in return.
"I suppose you know," retorted his Susan, with doubt in her voice.
Returninghome from the princely banquet side by side in the double jinrikisha, not a word had been spoken between Tetsujo Onda and his child. The master went at once into his little study, banging shoji and fusuma close around him.
Yuki, forcing back her sad thoughts, related to her mother and the eager servants an account of the many beautiful dishes at the feast. For their amusement she even told a few of the queer foreign mistakes. Some of these were received by Maru San in gasping horror.
"Ma-a-a-a!" she cried once. "A foreign lady, rich and educated, leave—one—chopstick—standing on its head in a bowl of rice! Ma-a! But how can I believe that? Miss Yuki must be joking."
"Just think what foolish things you would do at a foreign banquet, with their awkward knives, forks, and spoons," said Yuki, smiling.
Maru shook her head. This revolution of the poles of etiquette was too much for her brain.
Each article of Yuki's attire, beginning with the heavy satin obi (sash), was carefully folded, pressed smooth by the hands, and put away lovingly in a lacquered clothes-chest. Sometimes Iriya performed this service, sometimes Suzumè. Yuki and Maru were both considered too inexperienced for such careful manipulation.
That night it was the old warrior's turn to remain awake, staring at the ceiling, spelling out the future by the andon's dim light, and planning ways to rescue his daughter from her mad attachment without inflicting unnecessary pain. For Yuki was indeed the pride of his heart. It was a humiliation as well as a sorrow that she should be willing to repudiate her nationality.
With his slow wits and somewhat rigid cast of mind he had not caught the full importance of the evening just passed, or the significance of the test in which the Red God had played so large a part. Yet in his daimyo's eye, as it rested on Yuki, he had seen something that stirred the blood in the old samurai's veins. Surely not even the ladies of the golden Fujiwara age had been more beautiful than Yuki-ko. Then, Haganè was not indifferent to beauty in women. Could it be possible— But no! Tetsujo dared not let this fancy spread. His skull would split with it. Groaning, he turned on his wooden pillow and tried to sleep—but in vain.
Meanwhile his daughter, not twenty feet away, behind her silver fusuma, lay in dreamless quiet. The certainty of Haganè's implication, and the tremendous opposition it involved, steadied and concentrated her. She knew what she had before her and deliberately willed the sleep that should bring strength.
In the early dawn, within the sound of her father's restless tossing, she crouched against a shoji, and in the faint pink glow wrote an English letter. Every motion showed care. The rustling of the long sheets of Japanese paper would have betrayed her, so she wrote in pencil on a little pad that bore the name of a stationer in Washington. From time to time she consulted an open letter in a man's writing, a wild, illogical, despairing letter,—the one that Gwendolen had brought some days before.
"How will your thoughts be this gray morning, my dear?" she wrote to him. "Last night you were as one stung by happy madness. You would not see nor hear my warnings. Now you will be realizing why I wished to make warnings. Lord Haganè is with my father against us. They wish me not to marry with a foreigner. That terrible painting was a test, and I have betrayed us by my woman's soft heart. Now they are sure that the one I love is in Tokio they will take stronger care against me. Dear Pierre, I do not think there is any hope! We can wait,—or we can die!—just now I believe nothing else is possible. O Pierre! If my weakness offend you, and if already it seem to you far beyond any help,—if you, being the impatience, have not heart to solong wait,—let me go! Forget poor Yuki! Indeed, I should not have promised at all. I belong to my country, as in previous time I said. I must not make sad your bright life. Rather would I be forgotten than bring you to grief. Your Yuki-ko."
This letter she addressed to Pierre at the French Legation, stamped, sealed it, and slipped it into the long, hanging sleeve of her kimono, intending, at the first opportunity, to get it into the hands of a postman. After this she arranged her hair and obi quickly and went out into the kitchen where already she heard old Suzumè and Maru San at work. Hardly had she entered when the front gate opened and the newspaper-boy ran in, his small copper bell clamoring on his hip. His bovine face was crimson with suppressed joy. Beside the usual morning sheet he held out a printed extra, shaking it toward her.
"Look at this! Honorably read these headlines, o jo san! Banzai Nippon!" he cried.
Yuki reached forward for the hand-bill. "It is war! War! Togo has fired!" she read, in a low, tense voice. "War with that great brutal nation, and we have fired! O Nippon! O my Emperor! The ancient gods be with you!"
"Three ships already sunk! Three!" screamed the boy, wildly, and tossed up his foreign jockey-cap.
"Kwannon preserve us! What has happened—an earthquake?" cried old Suzumè, hastening from the well-curb, and wiping red hands on her apron as she came.
"War! War, nurse! Our country is at war this minute, and three Russian battle-ships are already sunk!"
"We'll teach the bears that we are not to be trampled—Banzai Nippon!" boasted the paper-boy, as he hurried back to the street.
Iriya, not quite dressed, thrust her head from the parted fusuma.
"War, Mistress! War, Master! The honorable Mr. Togo has sunk all the Russian battle-ships and beheaded all the generals with his own hand!" shrieked Suzumè. Maru began to cry.
"War!" faltered Iriya, and shrank back into the dim room.
"Banzai! May our Emperor live a thousand years!" roared Tetsujo. Those outside could hear him hurtling about the narrow room. "Tell them to hang the flags above the gate, woman! Quick! Every moment wasted is a sacrilege! Gods of my Ancestors, at last we fight! Would that I were with Togo!"
Iriya, after giving orders for the flags, threw herself before the family shrine, where lights burned always in small, steady, pointed flames. "Ancestral spirits of our home, old deities of this land, give strength to our soldiers and sailors!" she whispered.
Tetsujo brushed past her, fully equipped for walking. His old face twitched with eagerness.
"Do you not wait for your worthless breakfast, honorable master?" ventured Suzumè.
Onda gave a loud laugh and tossed the old dame a handful of coin.
"Breakfast! I'm eating and drinking food of the gods! Here! Take this money, and all of you women go to your temple and make offering! I seek the public places where men assemble." Suddenly he halted. Haganè's last words came to his ears. His face turned black, and he slowly walked into the house with bent head. "I had forgotten—I cannot go. Serve the breakfast as usual," he muttered in the voice of an old man. Stumbling into the main room he said under his breath, "Hachiman Sama, help me to endure! On a day like this—I, Onda Tetsujo—I a warrior of Haganè's clan—I must be held here like a tame cock in a bamboo basket! Had I not seen the look in his Highness's eye—I might hurl all aside and take the risk—"
Soft footsteps had been following him. He wheeled, to face Yuki. Her eyes were gleaming and steady, though her face had crimsoned with shame. "Father," she began proudly, "I know the reason of your return. All your heart burns to be with other men, and to hear full news of this mighty event. Go, I entreat you! There is no fear of what—you and Prince Haganè think."
The old warrior himself now showed embarrassment. He would not meet her gaze, but let his eyes move restlesslyabout the floor as he answered: "Yes, my old heart strains like a bowstring to be gone—and I do not dare! You defied me once,—my blood grows hot at the thought of it."
"Still, I am your daughter," said Yuki. "And I think you will believe me when I offer you my pledge that, from this moment till your return, even though it be a week hence, I shall not leave this house and garden, shall not admit a foreign guest to it nor listen to foreign speech."
"I believe you," said Tetsujo, with great relief in his face. "You will neither go nor admit a foreign guest—nor write and receive letters?"
Yuki caught up her sleeve. Onda's face darkened. Deliberately drawing forth the letter she offered it to her father, saying, "Here is one I have already written and shall send. Will you not trust me even further and be the one by whose hand it goes?"
"Me post it? Me put it in a box?" he asked in amazement.
"The meaning it bears is not against your desire, father. Rather may it destroy an evil that already lives. I ask you to take it."
"To bargain thus with a mere girl—" the samurai muttered. Then he threw his head back. "My blood is in your veins. I trust you. Give it."
Yuki, choking back a little sob, fell at his feet and touched her forehead to the floor. She heard his quick and heavy tread shiver through the house. Then followed, coming in her direction, the gentler steps of Iriya.
Yuki lifted her arms. "Mother, mother!" she cried passionately, "why could I not have been born a man? To die for one's country, in battle, with the thought of the Emperor like a cooling draught at the lips! To stand on the great black ship, smiling in storm and snow and fog, driven in like fate itself to glorious chances! Oh, that is tolive!But to be a woman—"
"Yes," said Iriya, quietly seating herself. "The fortunate are those who know, in this incarnation, full expression of a burning heart."
"Do you feel so too, mother?—you, who are always so tranquil and so dear?"
"I too am a samurai's daughter. In the strife of Restoration days I saw my father and my brother die—I saw my mother live."
"Oh, dearest one, how selfish we young souls are. We are like green fruit that has no mellowness. You have suffered so deeply—and I never guessed."
Iriya, with half-closed eyes on the garden, uttered words which until the hour of her death never quite loosed their echoes from the girl's heart. "Young souls are indeed unripe in the ways of love. That suffering of mine was mere indifference to the grief I shall know if, at an hour like this, with Nippon in the throes of re-birth, my only child should become the wife of her enemy."
Yuki cowered back. She could not look her mother in the face. Up to this moment she had never dreamed that Iriya had been told anything. The sense of comradeship and of interdependence between a Japanese husband and wife is very strong; but in this case, where Tetsujo's angry violence had been so out of keeping with the whole tenor of his life, Yuki was perhaps justified in feeling that he would prefer to maintain a sullen reticence.
Iriya's words, and the way she spoke them, showed not only that she was conversant with the whole threatening situation, but that she had thought and prayed deeply. It did not seem at all the every-day domestic Iriya that spoke, but an older and more impersonal spirit, issuing from borrowed human, lips.
An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Iriya sat rigid and upright, as a silver image in a Buddhist niche. Little Yuki, feeling very small and young and human, crept noiselessly to her own room.
Tetsujo did not return until the following day. He showed evidences of strong excitement, and could not for a while be seated, but strode up and down the matted floor of the house, throwing off ejaculations and phrases of war-news. He had much to tell in his irritating, disjointed way. But Japanese women do not show impatience. They knelt out of range of his feet, but within good hearing, following his motions withfeverish eagerness, and snatching at his words as at whizzing fireflies. Names of those killed, quotations from foreign newspapers, reports from the Tokio war-office, maledictions upon himself that he was too old to go,—all came in a scurrying swarm from the samurai's lips.
"Refused me—they refused me,—those grinning, foreignized apes at the war-office. Even my daimyo will not help me. An age limit? Gods! Trained men must twirl their thumbs while boys with soft hearts and flabby muscles defend the Emperor! Would that I had ten thousand lives to give, and that each life in passing held the agonies of ten thousand deaths. Even that would be but a handful of blown petals to the whirling majesty of Nippon in the breath of the Eternal.—But wait! There are many young men now, there are hills of powder and river-beds of shot; but when that powder melts like snow in a spring rain, when the last shot stings the air, then may the sword-arm leap to usefulness. The Cossacks cut and slay like demons,—why not we? For whom then will be the cry but for old Onda? Onda Tetsujo! who has cut three bodies through with one slow, steady stroke; who has bared a living bone so swiftly that the slain creature turned inquisitive eyes on death! Bah, I babble and rave like a Meiji actor."
"Yet, Lord, it may come,—it may come," whispered Iriya, aloud. "Daily I shall pray and sacrifice that this desire of our hearts be granted." Yuki looked upon these heroic beings that had given her life, and knew the pangs of self loathing. What was she, their only child, now doing for the land they loved? Planning ways of remaining faithful to a foreign lover! She drooped her head still lower. Alas! Had Pierre not taken that promise from her unguarded soul! If Pierre even now would give her up—would understand.
Tetsujo, still fuming in a noble rage, cut the floor in cross-lines of hasty striding. He turned at intervals, catching back his flight, raising himself up to silence as if he heard a bugle-note, staring, unseeing, into the garden, then clenching his fists, muttering new imprecations, and throwing himself again into his restless walk. The essence of Yamato Damashii breathed from him. One listened for the clank of steel andshark's-skin armor. His right hand felt incessantly for the vanished sword-hilts. All at once he stopped directly before Yuki, transfixed her with fierce, tormented eyes and cried, "Onda Yuki, you are a samurai's daughter."
Yuki met his look. "I am a samurai's daughter."
"See that you forget it not."
For an instant longer he glared into her upraised face, then flinging himself away he muttered, "Oh, that I had a son to offer,—one son only to serve my land! They would not let me go." He seated himself at last; folded his arms within the short, blue, cotton sleeves; and sank into a brooding revery.
With a few days the first frenzy and tumult of the war were over. The nation settled into a state of watchful and sober patriotism. Men turned to practical work, raising money for the war fund, for all knew that it was indeed a struggle for life or death.
Yuki had received by mail another letter. Tetsujo was present when it came. She read and re-read it slowly, under his very eyes, and then tore it into scraps, letting them fall in small white flecks upon the red coals of the hibachi. Onda stared at her, fascinated, but found nothing to say.
The note was in Pierre's most appealing vein. He urged her, for the sake of both, to be a heroine. He forgave her, a thousand times over, her hint of betrayal of the night before. Again he congratulated himself and her on his foresight in compelling the stricter pledge. "You must see now, my poor, sorrowful darling, that it is the only thing to hold us back from despair." Yuki's heart sagged within her. She attempted no reply. She wondered dully how so flaming a love failed to illuminate reason. Pierre simply could not understand. Well, she must be calm and clear enough for both. Her deepest fear, but half admitted, was that Tetsujo, with Prince Haganè behind, would now attempt to end the matter by marrying her to some young noble of their acquaintance. She hardly dared face the thought of what her home life might become after her repudiation of such an offer.
Gwendolen remained apart, and Yuki rightly guessed thatit was at Minister Todd's instigation. She never for a moment doubted Gwendolen's loyal affection. This restraint was a proof of it, as also of Mr. Todd's clear judgment.
Pierre began now, in his restless misery, to haunt the streets immediately surrounding Yuki's home. Apparently he wished to establish, as a signal, a certain little quaint air from Carmen that he loved. He would whistle a phrase and pause, evidently expecting her to continue with the answering melody. At twilight, one day nearly a week after "the banquet of the Red God" (as she always thought of it), she was standing alone beside her plum-tree, now almost bare of flowers. The sky stretched low and heavy, as a giant tent hung with unspilled rain. No sunlight had come with the day. The wind pinched and stung with dampness. As she stared mournfully upon the falling petals, holding out a languid hand to stay their flight, a few large flakes of snow came down.